Fighting Human Trafficking in North Dakota

North Dakota experienced an oil boom over much of the past decade, much of it due to fracking. The resulting influx of cash transformed previously rural areas and outposts—with both positive and negative results. Crime began to rise, especially against women, and human trafficking had its own ugly mini-boom.

Although the oil boom is coming to an end in North Dakota, sex trafficking remains a bustling business. "Traffickers know that regardless of the price of oil, demand remains," says North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp. "And that means that there is unfortunately still a market for those who believe human beings are nothing more than a commodity to be bartered."

In a statement, Heitkamp told Glamour, "Human trafficking is among our nation's most insidious crimes—taking hold of our nation's most vulnerable men, women and children and imprisoning them into lifelong cycles of crime, exploitation and violence. Often we think about human trafficking happening in other parts of the world, but it is happening in our own country and too often in our own backyards. This modern form of human slavery started to take root in North Dakota in the midst of our state's oil and gas and population booms—when an inpouring of new money and new faces brought new crimes that our communities didn't quite recognize—sex trafficking masquerading as prostitution."

Christina Sambor, the Project Coordinator for North Dakota's Project Fuse, says that North Dakotans shouldn't dismiss their sex trafficking epidemic as a problem brought on by outsiders: "This isn't only happening here because people from other states have come to our state. We need to face the reality that in North Dakota, there is a market [for buying sex].

There may be hope in sight, though. There is now an FBI office in Willston, a county seat in the region, and a town that has been reshaped by the boom and bust. And, through the work of Sambor and other key advocates in North Dakota, the state has just received a $1.25 million grant allocation from the state legislature and a $1.5 million federal grant to staff thirteen positions across the state to focus on human trafficking, from staff devoted specifically to dealing with homeless youth, to legal services and law enforcement, to domestic and sexual violence programs. Heitkamp has pledged to continue fighting trafficking both in her state and nationwide—particularly for the LGBT community, and runaway and homeless youth, who are particularly at risk.